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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22897357">Cataclysm</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackinthecup/pseuds/crackinthecup'>crackinthecup</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ends and Beginnings [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:07:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>456</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22897357</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackinthecup/pseuds/crackinthecup</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Melkor creates ice for the first time, and Mairon dwells on his master’s nature.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ends and Beginnings [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112774</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Cataclysm</h2></a>
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    <p>Mairon stands grim and proud on a lonely mountaintop beside his chosen master. Melkor has drawn him forth from Utumno’s depths for some inscrutable purpose, and now he watches Melkor in expectant silence as his master watches the rain splashing into dozens of gleaming little puddles. Melkor tips his head back, smiling up at the dark sky, and Mairon’s mood softens, unbidden, as it has been doing more and more often in his master’s presence.</p><p>Melkor holds out his hands, gathering rainwater in his cupped palms, and Mairon looks on in keen interest as he wills it into something else, something harder and stronger and <em>his</em>. Veins of ice slowly spread through the water until it freezes completely. Melkor turns to Mairon with a wild grin, and then he laughs, and at the cataclysm of his laughter the temperature drops until Mairon shivers helplessly, unable to conjure up enough heat to keep himself warm.</p><p>Every green, vulnerable thing around them is struck dead. Snowflakes flurry down from the sky, silent and cold and beautiful, and Mairon tilts his head up in wonder. Melkor closes his fingers around the ice in his palms, he lets it shred into his skin, sending little droplets of blood sizzling down through the gathering snow.</p><p>And in that moment, Mairon catches himself thinking that the whole world will eventually be yoked to Melkor’s will: as much as the mountaintop upon which they stand, which Melkor might choose to pulverise tomorrow or in a century. Flesh cannot contain Melkor’s spirit as much as a charred groove of earth cannot contain a twist of lava. He is ruin cast in living flesh and his eyes are the hard, bright glitter of ice and with a careless flick of his hand he commands such raw power that Mairon cannot but kneel before him.</p><p>But though Mairon can polish his words as if they were gemstones, perfect and irresistible, he does not have the skill to give voice to this crushing, dizzying feeling that Melkor sets glittering in his veins. It scrapes and abrades and <em>rips</em> up his throat, froths bloody upon his lips. And when Melkor pulls him close, kisses him with passion bordering on violence, Mairon knows that he can sense it in the quiet trembling of his limbs, the eager, unlordly breaths he forces into his lungs.</p><p>A part of Mairon would dearly like to hide it, secrete it away into some dark corner of his mind never to trouble him again: how Melkor can shatter his poise with a single touch, devastate him with a single cutting remark.</p><p>But he cannot.</p><p>It happens because it must, because it should, as buds bloom because it has never occurred to them not to.</p>
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